PARIS, FRANCE.- The Musée d’Orsay presents the exhibit From Symbolism to Expressionnism. Willumsen (1863-1958), a Danish artist through September. Jens Ferdinand Willumsen was born in Copenhagen in 1863 but lived much of his life in France. After initial training in art at the Royal Academy of the Fine Arts in Copenhagen (1881-1885) and in architecture at the Copenhagen Technical College (1879-1882), he completed his education in 1885 in the Free Studios directed by the artist P.S. Krøyer (1851-1909). He also spent several sojourns in Paris: in 1888-1890, 1893-1894 and 1903-1904. His works were exhibited in the Salon, the Salon de la Société nationale des Beaux-Arts, the Salon des Artistes Indépendants, in the gallery run by Le Barc de Boutteville and at the Universal Exhibition of 1900. The piece selected for the Universal Exhibition – Jotunheim (Frederikssund, J.F. Willumsens Museum) – was an impressive creation, not only a great success for Willumsen but a masterpiece of Symbolist painting. The large mountain landscape was painted in 1892-1893 after a trip to Norway. Willumsen designed the frame himself: a series of low-relief allegorical figures cut out of zinc and painted.

After a stay in Copenhagen, where he was employed from 1897 to 1900 as the Art Director of the porcelain factory Bing & Grøndhal, then extensive travel to the United States, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Spain, and North Africa, he settled in the South of France in 1916 (Villefranche, Nice, Cannes, Le Cannet). He returned only episodically to Denmark. Yet he continued to exhibit his works there regularly and he received a stream of private and official commissions from Denmark, including the Grand Relief (The Great Relief), a huge symbolic synthesis of life and mankind, produced between 1923 and 1928, but constantly in his mind since the late 1890s. He died at Le Cannet in 1958, where he was living with Michelle Bourret, a French dancer whom he had met in 1928. Willumsen was previously married twice, first to Juliette Meyer and then to Edith Wessel, who had both two children.

Exhibiting Willumsen is no easy task. For one thing, his long career exceeds by several decades the time span allocated to the Musée d’Orsay. For another, his intellectual faculties and robust constitution enabled him to work simultaneously in very different fields with equally sustained interest. Apart from painting, he practised sculpture, architecture and ceramics and was an accomplished engraver and photographer. His energetic temperament, deeply individualistic, mercurial and receptive, makes an approach to his work complex and full of surprises, such as the disconcerting Joueurs de boules (The Bowls Players), 1939-1946 (Frederikssund, Willumsens Museum).

Initially attracted by Raffaëlli’s Naturalism, as is shown by a number of canvases painted in Paris in 1889, La vie du lavoir (Life in the Wash House) (Göteborg, Kunstmuseum) and Jour d'hiver à Montmartre (A Winter’s Day in Montmartre) (Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst), Willumsen came in contact with Parisian avant-garde circles in the 1890s and his painting, influenced by Gauguin and the Nabis – especially Vallotton (Scène des quais de Paris (Life on the Quays of Paris), 1890, Frederikssund, Willumsens Museum) – tended towards Cloisonnism and Synthetism.

The rhythm of his compositions, based on a strong, simplifying line and a supple arrangement of lines and colours, gives them a decorative (Châtaigniers (Horse-chestnut Trees), 1891, Frederikssund, Willumsens Museum) and symbolist aspect (Jotunheim, 1892-1893).

A work like Jotunheim nevertheless shows that the artist soon drew away from French Symbolism and turned towards a form of expression that was more Nordic than Latin, even if classical Antiquity, especially ancient Greece, still had a strong hold over him (Sappho. Tête d'une grecque moderne (Head of a Modern Greek Woman), 1893; Affiche de l'Exposition libre et Maquette du bâtiment de l'Exposition libre (Poster for the Free Exhibition and Model for the Free Exhibition), 1896, Cinerary Urn, 1898).

Indeed, nourished by his discovery in 1900 of the immense spaces of the New World, the expressionist power that emanates from his large canvases on the themes of the mountains (Soleil sur les montagnes du Midi (Sun over the Mountains in the South), 1902, Stockholm, Thielska Galleriet) and the sea (Après la tempête (After the Storm), 1905, The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo) inevitably bring Munch and Hodler to mind. In his vision, nature, often hostile and threatening, even in its beauty, emerges as the creative force of all life. Man in the new century sometimes manages to dominate it. This is the meaning of the two great “modern” allegories: Une alpiniste (The Woman Climber) (1904, Copenhagen, G.A. Hagemanns Kollegium) and Le physicien (A Physician) (1913, Frederikssund, Willumsens Museum). On the other hand, the large canvas measuring over four metres long, Enfants se baignant sur la plage de Skagen (Children Bathing on the Beach at Skagen) (1909, Frederikssund, Willumsens Museum), is a hymn to exuberance, an exceptional moment of fusion not only of man and nature but of the Nordic and Mediterranean worlds: although the light is that of the huge white sandy beaches of northern Denmark, the boys leaping naked into the sea were painted from snapshots taken by Willumsen at Amalfi in 1902 and 1904.

In the 1910s, Willumsen developed a vision based on the luminous power of colour. During several stays in Spain, in 1910, 1911 and 1912, he discovered El Greco and wrote a book about him which was published in France in 1927. In Sophus Claussen lisant son poème "Imperia" à Helge Rode et à Willumsen (Sophus Claussen reading his poem “Imperia” to Helge Rode and Willumsen) (1915, Aarhus, Kunstmuseum) and La soupe du soir (The Evening Soup) (1918, Frederikssund, Willumsens Museum), the tense atmosphere comes from the intensity of the colours and the expressionist distortion of the figures, revealing a new stylistic direction.

This ardent temperament, although not devoid of sarcastic humour, spoke ironically of creativity thwarted by the weight of the soul and failing inspiration, as is shown by the two paintings against a bright red background Le peintre et sa famille (The Painter and his Family) (1912, Stockholm, National Museum) and Autoportrait en blouse de peintre (Self-Portrait in an Artist’s Smock), executed in Nice in 1933 (Frederikssund, Willumsens Museum).

The exhibition From Symbolism to Expressionnism, Willumsen (1863-1958), A Danish artist, brings together some thirty paintings, ten prints, as many pieces of ceramics and forty photographs.